Programs by Date

2005

Saturday 31 Dec 2005

The joy of playing with a pre-school child is the joy of make-believe. A teacup becomes a telephone; a rocking horse morphs into a dragon; the table and chairs construct a castle. 'How?' 'Why?' and 'What?' are the child's most frequent questions and their imagination is often the place where they find the answers. But does the young imagination play a more substantial role in a child's cognitive development? Does it give us tools for real world analysis well into adulthood? On All in the Mind this week Gretchen Miller explores the power of imaginative little minds.

Saturday 24 Dec 2005

Sally certainly bewildered Harry about the vagaries of the female orgasm in that Hollywood blockbuster. But evolutionary scientists have long been stumped too. What purpose does the female orgasm serve, evolutionarily speaking? Close friend of the late great Stephen Jay Gould, Professor Elisabeth Lloyd, has taken on 50 years of evolutionary biology and 21 different theories of the female orgasm, and rejected all but one. There's bias in the ranks, she argues, and its impact on how we see women's sexuality today is palpable. Could the female orgasm be of little more consequence than the male nipple - a mere by-product?

Saturday 17 Dec 2005

The figures of the grumpy old man and woman are a part of popular culture, but this clichéd image may be wrong. New research tells us that as we get older we often become happier. For as we age we pay less attention to negative thoughts. But what is the evolutionary explanation for this? Join Julie Browning for the final episode exploring the emotional brain and our ever-increasing capacity for happiness.

Saturday 10 Dec 2005

Jealousy - that green-eyed monster - can eat you up from the inside. Many people experience it as a destructive force in their lives. Jealousy frequently sparks arguments, the breakdown of relationships, domestic violence, even murder. But it is an integral part of our emotional palette, so why do we need it? Julie Browning explores the evolutionary arguments for jealousy and asks the question: Do men and women experience jealousy differently?

Saturday 3 Dec 2005

Emotions are complex reactions that engage our bodies and minds and anger is one of our most commonly felt emotions. Each day, be it at home, work or school, we may find the deeds of others maddening. To respond to these often minor irritations with a 'blind fury' can be destructive, but more tempered feelings of annoyance may fuel productive change. Anger is the emotion that can motivate us to act against perceived injustices but it can also provoke fear and violence. We explore the 'good, the bad and the ugly' of our angry selves.

Saturday 26 Nov 2005

For centuries western philosophers proclaimed emotions the enemy of rational thought. It was believed that emotions stymied cool-headed thinking. But over the last twenty years a quiet scientific and philosophical revolution has taken place. Instead of being the font of irrationality, emotions are now routinely viewed as integral to intelligent action. But uncertainty still surrounds the emotions. So what can contemporary science and philosophy tell us about our emotional selves? Over four weeks the emotional brain is explored. The series gets underway with sexual desire.

Saturday 19 Nov 2005

Shakespeare wrote of Julius Caesar's 'falling sickness'. Epilepsy was a mystery then and remains an enigmatic condition. It affects around 400,000 Australians and is typified by seizures and commonly a temporary loss of consciousness during the seizure. For centuries it has been associated with prophets, mystics and witchcraft. Most famously the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky believed epilepsy deepened his religious beliefs and gave him intense feelings of joy or 'ecstatic auras'. More recently, studies have recorded that a small minority of epileptics do develop a powerful religious faith, seemingly as a result of their condition. Professor Michael Trimble, from the Institute of Neurology in London, and Professor Bryan Kies from Groote Schuur Hospital in South Africa discuss the continuing challenges and puzzles of epilepsy.

Saturday 12 Nov 2005

Dementia is commonly regarded as a cruel and relentlessly progressive disorder -where, over time, a person is stripped of their unique skills and identity. But recently clinicians have noted not only deficits in dementia patients, but that other cognitive skills remain intact - and can even become accentuated. Remarkably a number of patients with dementia develop new artistic abilities. According to neurologist Bruce Miller, from the Memory and Aging Centre in California, the maintenance and even growth of artistic skills in dementia patients offers insight into creativity and brain plasticity. Bruce and Professor John Hodges, from the University of Cambridge, consider what we know about dementia and its impact on personality and ability.

Saturday 5 Nov 2005

Nambucca Heads is a beautiful seaside town on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. But despite the tranquil environment, figures for postnatal depression in new mothers appear, at first glance, to be astronomical. Early research suggests half of new mothers suffer postnatal depression  five times the rate of their city sisters. The possible reasons for this includes the 15 per cent unemployment rate, poverty, limited medical help and a claustrophobic and watchful social environment. Liz Keen investigates the incidence, diagnosis and treatment of postnatal depression in Nambucca.

Saturday 29 Oct 2005

The 20th century gave us many things, including democracy and modernism. But from these developments there grew specific types of mental illness  and we now have an increasing number of people suffering from narcissism and borderline personality disorder, according to Dr Theodore Millon  known as the grandfather of personality theory.

Coming Up

Rhythmic music can affect how the brain controls our stress response. We discuss how group-based drumming taps into people’s emotions—and when combined with reflective discussion this can be an effective alternative form of therapy.

Feature articles

Melissa was in her early teens when she first began to sense something wasn't quite right with her hearing. Years later she read a magazine article about a condition called misophonia, which described exactly how she was feeling.

Imagine the sound of someone's nails scratching a blackboard. Now imagine hearing this sound again, but this time it is literally unbearable. Lynne Malcolm and Olivia Willis enter the world of misophonia.

Like oral cultures around the world, Indigenous Australians use cues from the landscape to recall and pass on important knowledge, cultural values and wisdom. Lynne Malcolm and Olivia Willis discover how these songlines operate as a potent form of cultural memory.